Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
She was so lawyerly, so reminiscent of my father, that I almost laughed. I could tell I was about to get an earful, so I raised my hands in surrender to her shark-like smile and backed away. “I don’t know Porphyrian law at all,” I said. “I’m going to have to take your word for it, whatever your argument may be.”
Her gaze softened a little. “I think he’s depriving us of a wonderful opportunity. I always suspected we had Southlander cousins. I’ve been looking for a loophole,” she said quietly, her mouth wobbling grotesquely as she spoke. “I haven’t found one yet.”
Then she wrapped her stole around her and hurried away into the Zokalaa crowds.
The last ityasaari, Newt, was a singer. I enjoyed inducing visions of him; I could have listened forever. I knew he often performed in the harbor market, warbling behind a row of canvas booths, or joining in with singing fisherfolk as they unloaded their crab pots. I began stalking him with my flute, parking myself in the market to play. He didn’t approach, but I’d hear him in the distance, singing the shadow of my song. We circled, shy of each other, never meeting, until one morning I spotted him, sitting on the edge of the fountain: a white-haired, freckled old man with an oddly elongated torso and stunted limbs.
He had cataracts in both eyes, but he looked up as if he sensed me and smiled beatifically, his wispy hair fluffing in the breeze like clouds upon the mountaintop. He closed his scaled eyes, raised his chin, and began to sing a low, droning note. The crowd around him quieted to a dull murmur, elbowing each other, as if they knew his singing and treasured it. Above his drone, as light and tremulous as flames dancing on water, keened an ephemeral overtone, a ghostly, whistling harmonic.
This singing technique was called sinus-song in Ziziba. I’d read about it, and speculated upon its mechanics with Orma, but I’d never heard it done. I didn’t know the art was practiced in Porphyry.
After a couple of false starts, I found a way to accompany his ethereal song with my clumsy, earthbound flute. Together we wove a song of sky and sea and the mortals who must live between the two.
A trumpet blared, a brassy knife through the middle of our music, and we cut off abruptly. The crowd parted for a large palanquin draped in white, borne by muscular young men. Behind the gauzy curtains, I could make out three priests of Chakhon, Paulos Pende among them. Worried about the “priestly injunction” Phloxia had mentioned, I turned away reflexively so he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want to get Newt in trouble for associating with me.
The litter passed and the marketplace resumed its bustle, but my music partner had disappeared into the maze of tables and tents.
Camba wrote back at long last, two weeks to the day after Pende had pulled Jannoula out of Ingar’s mind:
Many thanks for the peculiar syphered journal. As you perhaps anticipated, Ingar can’t stop himself from thinking about it, taking notes, and trying to translate it. He has asked to see you. Come at once, before the day heats up, and we’ll sit out in the garden.
The handwriting, blocky and stiff, was not Camba’s, and for a moment I wondered if Ingar had written the note, pretending to be Camba. Ingar would not have misspelled ciphered, though, not with his language skills. It was most peculiar.
Still, I welcomed the distraction and, unexpectedly, looked forward to seeing Ingar again.
The doddering doorman of House Perdixis let me in; I was expected, it seemed, so the note must have been written with Camba’s knowledge. I waited in her dim, faded atrium, where a cracked fountain trickled. An allegorical statue of Commerce gazed sternly into the pool; she was green in all her nooks and crannies. Camba, long-necked and stately, came out to meet me, kissed me solemnly upon both cheeks, and made me remove my shoes. Behind her, a petite white-haired woman, elegantly dressed, lingered in the doorway, watching me with crow-like eyes.
“My mother, Amalia Perdixis Lita,” said Camba, gesturing graciously.
I was rifling through my memory, trying to recollect the proper way a foreigner should greet a woman who outranks her in age, class, and sheer Porphyrian-ness, when Camba’s mother did the surprising. She approached and kissed my cheeks, then grabbed my head and planted a larger kiss on my brow. I’m sure I looked flabbergasted; her face crinkled into a smile.
“Camba tells me you’re the one who spoke to her on the mountainside that terrible day,” said the old woman in Porphyrian. “She thought she’d ruined the reputation of House Perdixis with that poisonous glassware, but you persuaded her to come back and face her brothers. As her mother, I must thank you for that.”
I blinked, thinking my Porphyrian had failed me.
Camba took my arm and led me away, saying, “We’ll be in the garden, Mother.”
She took me up a dim corridor. “Poisonous glassware?” I asked in Goreddi.
Camba averted her eyes. “I imported it from Ziziba, my first solo business deal. It came extremely cheap; I never questioned why. We later learned it was coated with an iridescent glaze, pretty to look at but easily dissolved by liquids. A baby died.”
That was why she’d wanted to kill herself. I’d assumed it was shame at being half dragon. I’d revised my guess after learning she’d misgendered herself, but that had also been wrong.
A single action could derive from many motivations. I should never assume.
We passed through a book-lined study, where two boys about Abdo’s age worked complicated geometry problems. “Mestor, Paulos,” said Camba, pausing to glance at their work. “Finish Eudema’s theorem, and then you’re dismissed.”
“Yes, Aunt Camba,” they droned.
“I leave the import business to my elder brothers these days,” said Camba as we quit the room. She smiled shyly. “Now I tutor my nephews in mathematics and study with Paulos Pende.”
We emerged into a manicured garden, a tidy square of lawn bordered by dark cedars and flanked by two long rectangular pools. A linen sunshade billowed gently in the breeze, and underneath it half a dozen people sat in wrought-iron chairs. It took a moment for my eyes to readjust to the sunlight and recognize Ingar, Phloxia the lawyer, winged Miserere, harbor-singing Newt, and the smiling twins.
“Phloxia found a loophole,” said Camba beside me, her voice quiet and low, “and we can’t be charged with impiety if we didn’t know you were coming.”
“You invited me!” I cried, astonished.
Her eyes twinkled deviously. “Indeed, I did not. My nephews took dictation to practice their Goreddi. It was never meant to be sent. Clearly, Chakhon’s chancy hand was in it, to a degree even Pende couldn’t dispute. By merciful Necessity, goddess of guests, we welcome you.”
Seeing them all like this, gathered together in a garden, I felt a little overcome. This was what I had longed for, so exactly, down to the cool grass and tidily shaped shrubberies. I caught Ingar’s eye across the yard; he smiled and nodded, but held back while the others lined up and kissed my cheeks in turn.
“Mina,” said Miserere, introducing herself.
“So pleased,” I croaked, clasping one of her clawed hands in mine.
Mina helped Newt forward, for he was nearly blind. “I’m called Brasidas,” he said in Porphyrian, extending his short arm. I took his twisted hand and kissed his freckled cheeks; he beamed and added, “Did you bring your flute?”
“She couldn’t know we would be here,” snapped Phloxia in Goreddi.
“But now that I am here, is it legal for you to stay?” I asked, teasing Phloxia while she administered air-kisses near my ears.
“Oh, I’m here on an errand,” said Phloxia, a devilish look in her eyes. She held up a gold filigree brooch. “I’m returning this to Camba. I can’t trust the servants with it, and I certainly can’t be expected to leave until she takes it from me.”
“Maybe Seraphina sings,” said Brasidas hopefully in Porphyrian.
“Shove over and let the twins have their turn,” said the shark-toothed lawyer, pulling Brasidas aside.
The tall, graceful youngsters kissed both my chee
Servants had set up a table to one side and laid it with figs, olives, and honeyed millet cakes. Camba poured from a sweating silver ewer a cold, thick concoction of lemon, honey, and snow. It froze my teeth.
We talked together in a mix of Goreddi and Porphyrian, Ingar or Phloxia translating when I needed it. I asked them for their stories; they told me how Pende had taken them under his wing as youngsters and they had served the temple of Chakhon for a time. Mina still acted as a guardian of sorts, and Brasidas sang there on holy days.
“Pende is our spiritual father,” said Phloxia, smiling ruefully, “and each of us his disappointing child.”
“He’s happy with Camba,” offered Brasidas, talking around a mouthful of figs.
“Yes, well, Camba came back to him, and Pende trained her to see the soul-light,” said Phloxia. She leaned over her plate of millet cakes and whispered exaggeratedly, “The rest of us were failures. We saw no light. I’m not sure we all can.”
“I can see Gelina’s,” said Gaios, his eyes wide and earnest.
“And I yours, brother,” said Gelina, resting her shapely head on his shoulder.
“The twins are a walking solipsism: self-referential,” said Phloxia, gazing at them fondly. She was like a sweeter Dame Okra. “Anyway, they broke the old man’s heart in turn by leaving Chakhon for Lakhis.”
“It was necessary,” said Gelina, her brows buckling anxiously. Gaios nodded.
Winged Mina stuffed olives into her mouth at an alarming rate, never spitting out any pits. When she spoke, her voice was raspy and raw: “The god doesn’t call us all. Pende understands why we leave.”
“I told Pende I had to leave, by Chakhon’s own logic,” said Phloxia. “If I’m to serve the god of chance, my presence in the temple should also be a matter of chance.”
Ingar chuckled at this, shaking his bald head; he seemed at home here. “Phloxia,” said Camba, who was sitting beside him, “you twist logic to your own purposes.”
“It’s a lawyer’s duty,” sniffed Phloxia, bunching her wobbly mouth into a pout.
Camba’s eyes twinkled fondly. “Didn’t I hear you had a brooch for me?”
“That’s hearsay!” cried Phloxia. “I can neither confirm nor deny …”
I rose and drifted over to the food table before the servants carried the last of the millet cakes away. Behind me the others laughed. They had so much history together and knew each other so well. I felt a bit overcome. This was what I had wanted to create in Goredd. Exactly this.
These ityasaari might be willing to bend Pende’s rules enough to meet me here, but I doubted they would go so far as to travel to Goredd against his wishes—and why should they? To defend someone else’s country? To re-create what they already had here?
I couldn’t ask them to come to Goredd, not with Jannoula waiting to pounce on them as soon as they ventured south, not when the one who could free them of her was certain to stay behind.
“You look melancholy,” said Ingar at my elbow, startling me. “I suspect I know why. I dreamed of this garden, too. So did Jannoula, but it can be accomplished without her.”
This was a new Ingar. The intensity and focus of his gaze astonished me.
“You look well,” I said.
He nodded gravely and pushed up his square spectacles. “Thank Camba. She believed in me when there wasn’t much me to be found.” Ingar’s thick lips twitched; he took a deep breath. “But you know what else has helped? I’ll show you.”
Ingar led me toward the house, under a shady portico. Two iron-framed chairs stood like sentinels beside a pile of books. Ingar picked a slim volume off the top of the heap. I recognized it immediately.
“I deciphered this,” said Ingar, gesturing me to a seat. “It’s Goreddi transliterated into the Porphyrian alphabet and written in mirror-hand, with gaps inserted at intervals to make it look like a cipher. Not so difficult, honestly, and I’m not the first to have read it. Look here.” He flipped to the last page, where someone had written in Goreddi:
To the librarians:
This is a tome of some historical value, I believe. It cannot remain in Goredd, but neither can I destroy it. Please file it wherever you file apocryphal religious writings. Heaven keep you.
Father Reynard of St. Vitt’s, Bowstugh Wallow
Lower down the page, Father Reynard had added one more faint line: St. Yirtrudis, if you are a Saint—if anyone is—forgive me for what I must do.
“Is this book about Yirtrudis? She’s a strange Saint to address otherwise,” I said, an unexpected hope rising in my chest. I’d always felt a visceral kinship with the hidden patroness of my hidden heritage.
Suddenly the possibility that Orma’s thesis might be true nearly overwhelmed me. My patroness, at least, might be truly, properly mine.
Ingar waggled his eyebrows. “It’s the only known copy of St. Yirtrudis’s testament. Perhaps even the original. How’s your ecclesiastical history?”
“Utterly worthless,” I said.
Ingar was relishing this. “Just two generations ago, this Father Reynard became Bishop Reynard of Blystane. From that seat of power, backed by my people, the aggressively devout Samsamese, he denounced St. Yirtrudis as a heretic.”
“Because of something in this testament?” I asked, clamping my hands between my knees to still them.
“Because of everything in it!” cried Ingar. “Yirtrudis throws everything we think we know about the Saints into confusion.”
I lowered my voice, as if the Porphyrians were going to care. “Does it say the Saints were half-dragons?”
Ingar leaned back to observe me with more distance. “That’s one of many remarkable claims. But how did you guess?”
I explained about Orma’s theories. “I found the book with his notes. He claimed to have read it, but he didn’t leave his translation at the library.”
“I’ll write one out for you,” said Ingar, nodding firmly. “I can read the text easily, of course, having cracked the cipher. You should hear the story in her own words. Everything is clear to me now.”
I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but something over my shoulder had caught his eye. I followed his gaze and saw Camba approaching, her sandals clacking on the flagstones.
“We’ve heard about Abdo,” Camba said solemnly. “I’m sorry he’s suffering. It’s cold consolation, but Jannoula’s struggle with Abdo may be preventing her from bringing other evils to fruition. Here.” She handed me a bundle wrapped in a napkin. “Some cakes for Abdo and his family. Please take them our love and prayers.” This was clearly my cue to go. I rose and glanced down at Ingar.
His eyes shone like hopeful stars as he looked at Camba. In that instant one thing became clear to me: Ingar wasn’t coming to Goredd, either. I couldn’t blame him, but my melancholy returned and followed me back to Naia’s.
That night I entered my garden of grotesques with a new sense of purpose. I was not there merely to soothe the grotesques—or myself—but to change something that had been niggling at me. I’d been finding myself more and more embarrassed by the silly names I’d given these people I was connected to. Master Smasher was the wrong gender, even in Goreddi; Newt (for his stunted limbs) and Gargoyella (for her enormous mouth) were outright insulting.
It was bad enough that I had affixed everyone’s mind-fire to myself without asking. The least I could do was call them by their right names.
I walked the winding paths, through meadows, over streams, among lush foliage, touching each upon the head and renaming them: Brasidas, Phloxia, Mina, Gaios, Gelina, Ingar, Camba, Blanche, Nedouard, Od Fre
I’d expected to feel everyone’s presence more keenly if I named them; maybe it wasn’t just shame that drove me, but some hope of renewal (the Milestones were now but twenty-three paces apart). If my garden could never exist in the real world as I had imagined it, so be it, but I would shore it up here. I felt Pende’s and Gianni’s absence constantly, as if I’d lost two teeth and couldn’t stop prodding my gums with my tongue.
Only when I reached Pandowdy, the single ityasaari I had not yet met in the real world, did I begin to realize my mistake. He rose out of the swamp, an enormous scaly slug, caked with grime, as big as ever. He loomed over me and touched the sky.
Literally.
His nose—or whatever you call the pointy tip of a featureless worm—jabbed the limpid blue as if it were the ceiling of a canvas tent. I gaped, disbelieving, whirled to face the rest of the garden, and bumped my head on another dollop of drooping sky.
I fell to my knees in a patch of moss—or not moss, but a tiny rose garden, with a tiny sundial in the center, and a tiny Dame Okra beside it, the size of a skittle-pin. I picked her up and stared at her. Beside the minuscule rose garden ran a narrow ditch, once an imposing ravine; jammed in this cranny was a skittle-pin Lars.
The sky, sagging further, touched the back of my neck. It was clammy.
The shrunken denizens of my garden were all within arm’s reach, as were the border fences, the egression gate, and the peeling, full-sized door of Jannoula’s cottage. That hadn’t shrunk; it was the only thing holding up the sky.
I gathered my people like twigs and laid them side by side on the lawn. How had this happened? Had I done this by naming them? I had only intended good, had only meant to … to acknowledge who they really were.
Was I finally seeing my own handiwork clearly? Abdo had called my garden a narrow gatehouse. I had imagined these human forms; maybe naming them had dispelled that illusion. All that was left was the mind-fire I had stolen. If I squinted, the row of doll-like avatars glowed faintly. I could finally see mind-fire; that was no comfort at all.